Planning Commission (India)

The Planning Commission is an institution in the Government of India, which formulates India's Five-Year Plans, among other functions.

History
Rudimentary economic planning, deriving the sovereign authority of the state, first began in India in 1930s under the British Raj, and the colonial government of India formally established a planning board that functioned from 1944 to 1946. Private industrialists and economist formulated at least three development plans in 1944. After India gained independence, a formal model of planning was adopted, and the planning commission, reporting directly to the Prime Minister of India was established. Accordingly, the Planning Commission was set up on 15 March 1950, with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as the chairman. Planning Commission though is a non statutory as well extra constitutional body, i.e. has been brought by an executive order. The first Five-year Plan was launched in 1951 and two subsequent five-year plans were formulated till 1965, when there was a break because of the Indo-Pakistan Conflict. Two successive years of drought, devaluation of the currency, a general rise in prices and erosion of resources disrupted the planning process and after three Annual Plans between 1966 and 1969, the fourth Five-year plan was started in 1969. The Eighth Plan could not take off in 1990 due to the fast changing political situation at the Centre and the years 1990-91 and 1991-92 were treated as Annual Plans. The Eighth Plan was finally launched in 1992 after the initiation of structural adjustment policies. For the first eight Plans the emphasis was on a growing public sector with massive investments in basic and heavy industries, but since the launch of the Ninth Plan in 1997, the emphasis on the public sector has become less pronounced and the current thinking on planning in the country, in general, is that it should increasingly be of an indicative nature.

Organisation
The composition of the Commission has undergone a lot of change since its inception. With the Prime Minister as the ex-officio Chairman, the committee has a nominated Deputy Chairman, who is given the rank of a full Cabinet Minister. Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia is presently the Deputy Chairman of the Commission. Cabinet Ministers with certain important portfolios act as part-time members of the Commission, while the full-time members are experts of various fields like Economics, Industry, Science and General Administration. The Commission works through its various divisions, of which there are three kind:

General Planning Divisions Programme Administration Divisions

The majority of experts in the Commission are economists, making the Commission the biggest employer of the Indian Economic Services.

Functions
The Planning Commission's functions as outlined by the Government's 1950 resolution are following: 1. To make an assessment of the material, capital and human resources of the country, including technical personnel, and investigate the possibilities of augmenting those resources which are found to be deficient in relation to the nation's requirement.
2. To formulate a plan for the most effective and balanced utilisation of country's resources.

3. To define the stages, on the basis of priority, in which the plan should be carried out and propose the allocation of resources for the due completion of each stage.
4. To indicate the factors that tend to retard economic development. 5. To determine the conditions which need to be established for the successful execution of

the plan within the incumbent socio-political situation of the country. 6. To determine the nature of the machinery required for securing the successful implementation of each stage of the plan in all its aspects.
7. To appraise from time to time the progress achieved in the execution of each stage of the

plan and also recommend the adjustments of policy and measures which are deemed important vis-a-vis a successful implementation of the plan.
8. To make necessary recommendations from time to time regarding those things which are

deemed necessary for facilitating the execution of these functions. Such recommendations can be related to the prevailing economic conditions, current policies, measures or development programmes. They can even be given out in response to some specific problems referred to the commission by the central or the state governments.
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